Looking at the 'Bright Side'; John Easdale is determined to enjoy
his solo career after Dramarama.;

By: MIKE BOEHM TIME STAFF WRITER

Y'know, ah-ah-ah, once bitten twice
shy, babe. --Ian Hunter, "Once Bitten Twice Shy." Different
people do the same thing every day,

But I just look the other way.

I keep on rollin,' keep on rollin' on.

--Dramarama, "Work for Food"

*

These days, John Easdale would rather work for food than play for
it.

He spent almost 10 years singing and writing songs for his living in
Dramarama, a rock band that was always a contender, never a champ in the rock
'n' roll prizefighting ring. By the end, in 1994, it had, to quote another
noted songwriter, turned into a frustrating mess.

Now Easdale, 36, is back for more. Actually, he is back for less. He
says he is content to let record-making be an intensely pursued hobby, rather
than the full-time profession it was in Dramarama. His first solo album,
"Bright Side," came out last week, a joint release between eggBERT Records, a
tiny Fullerton label owned by Easdale's longtime fan and friend, Greg Dwinnell,
and Harvey * Records, a label Easdale has started for himself.

Easdale said he turned down offers from bigger companies, shy about
the high-stakes record industry that bit him so badly in Dramarama. The sting
evidently lingers somewhere in Easdale's psyche, because several prime songs on
the fine "Bright Side" continue on a familiar tack from his Dramarama days,
anguishing over having tasted a spoonful of success, only to go away
hungry.

Yet Easdale, who plays Saturday at the Coach House and Sunday at the
Fullerton Earth Day Festival, said he isn't mired in bitterness.

The dominant note on "Bright Side" is still the trademark, stringy,
brink-of-a-breakdown cry that Easdale brought to Dramarama's five albums
(although always tempered by a distancing, sanity-preserving sense of humor
that comes through in caustically ironic wordplay). On his show-biz disaster
songs, it's the voice of one who loves rock 'n' roll not wisely, but too
well.

Easdale's low-keyed solo career is all about wising up.

Every workday he reports to an office in Burbank and sees different
people do the same thing Dramarama attempted: He is the editor of
Virtuallyalternative, a radio industry trade publication that keeps modern-rock
programmers abreast of the latest releases by the latest contenders.

Now he has hard facts to go with the intuitions he drew first from
Mott the Hoople's old refrain, "rock 'n' roll's a loser's game/but it
mesmerizes," then from his own experience.

"I'm not surprised that I'm getting my suspicions confirmed" about
the music industry, Easdale said Friday in a phone interview from his office.
"Every day I see a lot [that resembles] what went on with my band, and it made
me want to put the record out myself. I'm happy to be independent. I can take
the credit or blame, and I'm fine with that."

His apparent compulsion to write songs about show-biz failure is a
"therapeutic" exercise, Easdale said. It's not a case of wallowing in
frustration, but of dealing with the pain to let go of it.

"I don't want to be one of those guys who say, 'I've been burned by
the record companies; they stink.' It's a wonderful industry that feeds a lot
of people. But there's so much politics that I couldn't even imagine putting my
heart and soul into something and seeing it treated like one of 100 records on
their schedule.

"It's a failure-based business. They say 90 out of 100 records are
going to fail, and that's 90 out of 100 artists whose spirits are dashed. I see
it and feel like the luckiest guy in the world that I've gotten to make all
these records. It's a body of work; there's embarrassing moments here or there,
but I'm proud of it and happy with it. And 15 years later, I can still play a
concert and have people give a damn."

Indeed, Easdale's voice remains a staple on KROQ-FM (106.7), which
plays Dramarama's 1985 breakthrough song, "Anything, Anything (I'll Give You),"
almost daily. He estimates royalty statements tally about 10,000 radio plays
for the song per year nationwide, which yields him, at 2 1/2 cents per spin,
about $250 in songwriting royalties annually. Along with other income from
Dramarama's catalog--especially continuing catalog sales for the first two
albums that the band put out itself--"it's like having a decent part-time
job."

*

After Dramarama had run its course, Easdale had to do some
recuperating before he could feel lucky again, or even feel like making music.
He spent close to a year at home in La Habra, ignoring his guitar and happily
being a dad to his four young daughters, ages 3 to 9 (about a year ago, Easdale
and his wife bought their first house, nearby in Whittier).

He started playing some low-keyed shows, mainly in Orange County. In
July 1996, a radio station in New Jersey, where Dramarama got its start before
relocating that year to Southern California, asked Easdale to play a big
festival. "The outpouring of affection I got from people just touched me in
such a way that I thought maybe I should make another record," Easdale
said.

Meanwhile, he had to work for food. With a rocker's resume ("I'm fond
of saying it was like being a clown at the circus. It was like not having a
work history at all"), finding a job wasn't easy. Easdale had to use
connections just to land work at a warehouse in Placentia. Then his recording
studio experience and literary skills paid off: Again thanks to a friend's
help, he became producer of "Rotten Day," a daily two-minute radio soapbox for
the cantankerous John Lydon.

"It was a rundown of the day in rock, comedy style, with Johnny
Rotten ranting and raving about rock's most embarrassing moments, more or
less," Easdale said. "I got the job because I knew [how to use a] recording
studio, and I wasn't intimidated by [Lydon]. We got along well because I didn't
kowtow. He's got a strong BS detector, and if you're indulgent of him or
star-struck by him, he'll really put you down."

When Lydon gave up the show to reunite the Sex Pistols, Easdale
became editor of Virtuallyalternative, published by the same company that
produced the radio show.

He cobbled together "Bright Side" as time permitted. Easdale had
formed a new band for live shows--with Dramarama alum Mark Englert and Craig
Ballam on guitars, Tony Snow on drums and bassist Mike Davis--yet he decided to
play most of the music himself. He drew on his background as Dramarama's
original drummer, ran his customary acoustic guitar through "a bunch of boxes"
to achieve a raucous electric sound and created a one-man band for a good chunk
of the recording.

*

The album is essentially Dramarama by other means: terrific hooks and
well-cultivated influences from '60s pure-pop and '70s underground rock,
applied to a mixture of mournful ballads and headlong, seething rockers that
work out frustrations as they're being voiced.

"Breaking Things" plays like a sequel to "Anything, Anything." Like
his best-known song, this one chronicles a particularly volatile relationship
blowup. "Anything" was a post-mortem on Easdale's disastrous first marriage
when he was 22; "Breaking Things" chronicles a chapter in an ongoing marriage
that requires occasional venting of steam, as marriages will.

"It was the direct result of a little skirmish. [In the song] I'm
biting my tongue, counting to 10, breathing through my nose. I must have
written that at a point where you're ready to put your fist through the wall,
so you get in the car and get out of the house. I drove a mile, two miles, to
my mother-in-law's house, ran in the house and wrote it down. I have my studio
over there, so the kids don't spill soda in the tape recorders. Before I got
back home and apologized, that song was finished."

The apology, and the song, were accepted, Easdale said: "My wife's
the coolest person in the world."

*

Plans for "Bright Side" include getting it to disc jockeys who have
been friendly. He is getting exposure on Los Angeles' two key modern-rock
stations: Rodney Bingenheimer, who sparked Dramarama's career when he began
playing "Anything, Anything" on KROQ in 1986, is at it again, and Chris Carter,
Easdale's former Dramarama bandmate, has been playing it on his Sunday night
new-music radio show on Y-107.

Limited touring in old Dramarama strongholds is also planned.

Whatever happens, Easdale said, he doesn't think this chapter will
spawn any new music-biz frustration songs.

* The John Easdale Band, Scotland Yard and Plank play Saturday at the
Coach House, 33517 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. 8 p.m. $10-$12. Also
Sunday at 10 p.m. to close the Fullerton Earth Day Festival, a free outdoor
event at the Hub Cafe/Fullerton Amtrak Station parking lot at Harbor Boulevard
and Commonwealth Avenue, starting at 11 a.m. and featuring 11 other bands.
(714) 871-2233.

PHOTO: (A1) He's No. 1: Rocker John Easdale, above, is still heard
regularly on KROQ-FM singing "Anything, Anything (I'll Give You)," a 1985
hit for O.C.'s Dramarama, his former band. KROQ listeners recently voted it
the top modern rock song ever. PHOTOGRAPHER: KEVIN P. CASEY / L.A.
Times PHOTO: "I am totally and completely not expecting anything," John
Easdale says of solo work. PHOTOGRAPHER: KEVIN P. CASEY / Los Angeles
Times PHOTO: 'It's a failure-based business. They say 90 out of 100
records are going to fail, and that's 90 out of 100 artists whose spirits
are dashed. I see it and feel like the luckiest guy in the world that I've
gotten to make all these records. It's a body of work; . . . I'm proud of
it and happy with it.'--John Easdale Type of Material: Profile
Descriptors: EASDALE, JOHN; DRAMARAMA (MUSIC GROUP); MUSICIANS; ROCK MUSIC;